The National Retail Federation's Shop.org e-commerce trade division holds its FirstLook 2005 conference Jan. 18-20 at Chelsea Piers in New York.
The show was renamed from Shop.org Members Forum, which is typically held concurrently with NRF's main annual event. The NRF's 94th annual convention and expo, better known as Retail's Big Show, will be held Jan. 16-19 at New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
“It's an opportunity immediately after the holiday season to assess how everything did and understand what impact that will have on your strategy for 2005,” Scott Silverman, Shop.org's executive director, said of FirstLook.
About 600 e-commerce executives from the nation's leading retailers are expected to attend FirstLook (www.shop.org/firstlook). Sponsors and exhibitors include BizRate.com, Omniture, Bill Me Later, Celebros, Experian's CheetahMail, postfuture and Prosodie Interactive.
The agenda includes Shop.org's annual online holiday recap in conjunction with BizRate.com as well as Circuit City Direct and Forrester Research's take on customer acquisition and loyalty in a multichannel world. Representatives from Nielsen//NetRatings, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bank of America will comment on the effect of broadband online shopping.
Paco Underhill, managing director of consumer behavior researcher Envirosell and the author of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping,” will keynote the show. He also will lead a panel on integrating the online and offline customer experience and the role of usability testing. Co-panelists will include Creative Good CEO Phil Terry and Jonathan Erhlich, senior vice president of online for Canada's Indigo Books and Music.
Roundtables are planned as well, along with networking breaks.
“We're going to be focusing on broadband shoppers, which is creating a lot of opportunity for retailers,” Silverman said.
